Category Archives: Cartoons

As mentioned a few months ago, my ongoing illustration work with Pine Cove Christian Camps yielded some cool fruit this year: the opportunity to do comic pages. Here are the finished single-page stories I did for their Base Camps Bible Studies. (You can see the rough drafts here— most of which are pretty different from the final versions!)

Like this:

I first met Robby Mayne when I was a gangly, myopic high school freshman attending the Pine Cove Shores camp. Anyone in college qualified as “coolest thing ever” in my book, and Robby especially had one of those unique combinations of dry wit and spiritual enthusiasm that made him an exceptional counselor. The only thing I couldn’t parse was his weird obsession with LSU (These sorts of things don’t compute for a native Texas boy).

But the cool thing about Robby is, he wasn’t content to just stay “cool.” Instead of making a career out of working at the High School camp, he made a lateral move to Pine Cove’s Towers camp for grade schoolers. As its current director, he’s inspiring a whole new generation of kids, and in the process, he’s showing a remarkable gift for writing compelling Bible Studies that have definite all-ages appeal.

It’s always a joy to illustrate his work, and this year was no exception– Robby’s study focused on Scriptural characters who lived like God was everything to them. The stories he picked and retold reminded me of the great rewards found in our faith, and offered some cool opportunities to depict a lot of drama and emotion in some dynamic settings.

Pine Cove Towers 2012 Bible Study Illustrations:

Caleb entering his part of the Promised Land, from Judges.

Jonathan and his armor-bearer climbing to a Philistine camp, from 1 Samuel.

I’ve enjoyed a fruitful relationship with Pine Cove Christian Camps for over a decade now. I started going as a camper in 2000, came on summer staff in 2004, and even spent 8 months after graduating college in their discipleship program, The Forge. They’re a ministry that values excellence, and they have a very clear sense of mission that’s molded the way I approach my work.

They’ve also contracted me to do Bible study illustrations since 2009. At this point, I do covers and single-page illustrations for up to four studies a year, so they’ve become responsible for a large part of my professional catalog. But one thing I’d like to produce more of is comics. And wouldn’t you know: this year, one of the Bible studies called for comic pages.

What?! Well, I’m on board with that!

Below is my first round of sketches. The challenge was to depict five separate sequences from the Gospels (each individual page had to correspond with a different passage of Scripture) and still make them feel like installments of a single, continuous story. I’ll let you judge if I hit the mark:

And finally, the logo for our new sermon series. (You can see the concepts for it here).

One last thing of note: while we worked to develop the Soak Up the Son material, my pastor ran across some art he really liked from a company called Stampendous. We reached out to them and they actually donated their orignal art (the umbrella and tree) for the series. If you’re in the market for crafty stuff, hit them up– we owe them some big-time thanks.